Burdon-Sanderson, John Scott (1828-1905)

English physiologist. He was an important figure behind the establishment of physiology as an independent medical discipline. He devoted himself in 1870 to scientific research and initiated a new English school of experimental physiology. In 1882 he was appointed first Waynflete professor of physiology at Oxford University, and was regius professor of medicine there from 1895-1903. He was especially interested in the study of the functions of living tissues, investigated the electrical currents produced by the heart, and measured the speed of the nervous impulse.

Burdon-Sanderson was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He went to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in 1847, and then to London, England, as practising physician in 1853. He was appointed medical registrar, then lecturer at St Mary's Hospital, and elected Fellow of the Royal Society and Croonian lecturer in 1867. He was made a baronet in 1895.